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Uber's First Self-Driving Fleet Arrives in Pittsburgh This Month (bloomberg.com)

Posted by msmash on from the future-is-here dept.

Ride-hailing app Uber will introduce self-driving cars in Pittsburgh as soon as this month, Bloomberg reports citing many officials and engineers at the company. The move is the first part of a pilot program to explore the future of the technology, the report added. The company plans to test 100 Volvo XC90s outfitted to drive themselves. Still, the cars will be accompanied by two humans: an engineer who can take control of the vehicle when needed and a co-pilot who takes note. Bloomberg reports: The Volvo deal isn't exclusive; Uber plans to partner with other automakers as it races to recruit more engineers. In July the company reached an agreement to buy Otto, a 91-employee driverless truck startup that was founded earlier this year and includes engineers from a number of high-profile tech companies attempting to bring driverless cars to market, including Google, Apple, and Tesla. Uber declined to disclose the terms of the arrangement, but a person familiar with the deal says that if targets are met, it would be worth 1percent of Uber's most recent valuation.

5 of 133 comments (clear)

  1. "Sharing" by Calydor · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yeah, they are totally not a taxi company but just two people sharing a ride because they're going the same way.

    Even when the cars have no drivers.

    --
    -=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
    1. Re:"Sharing" by fluffernutter · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You start going down that road, and quickly you can point out that most laws are interference to the free market. Does this mean there should be no laws against any corporation ever? Just because you don't see the particular point of a given law, it doesn't make them less important to enforce.

      --
      Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
    2. Re:"Sharing" by Calydor · · Score: 3, Insightful

      But the cut that is no longer going to the drivers can easily be turned into a bonus for the CEO

      Fixed that for you, it was a common typo to make.

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  2. Re:Map based solutions? by DrXym · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Those scenarios are just the tip of the iceberg. Well they might have a human supervising the car because it's extremely unlikely that by itself could deal with many intractible scenarios that a human driver would barely have to think about.

  3. Re:Progress by clonehappy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Yeah, it really is a joke. Even the Google car only operates in autonomous mode a bit over half the time, the rest of the time being piloted by a real person. That's about the same percentage of time you can text, eat, change the radio, etc. as a person and not pay attention to the road. So what we're really being told is that we've finally gotten a computer to be able to do what a human can do with spare background cycles.

    Whoo-hoo!

    Although if we're being truthfully honest about all AI and all autonomous cars and all this hype, the real story is:

    Objective: Eliminate humans. Eliminate the human experience, eliminate the human element and turn the world into one big machine.

    But that's the elephant in the room that no one will admit, that the entire agenda is one that's anti-humanity, period. Too bad the computers will NEVER be able to reliably make the kinds of judgment calls that humans can and the entire AI borg system is going to come crashing down sooner or later, so we really won't have to worry about the anti-humanist ilk ever really doing much of anything to worry about.